This is a complete course in understanding, speaking and writing Hindi, the language spoken by over 275 million people throughout the world. If you are a beginner, or if your Hindi just needs brushing up, this course will progress quickly beyond the basics to a level where you can communicate with confidence. The course has proved effective as teaching material for both class tuition and individual study. The Hindi presented in the course is primarily colloquial and practical. An advantage of this approach is that it gives greater access to Urdu, Hindi's sister language. Hindi and Urdu share a virtually identical grammar and much of their vocabulary. The course is divided into 18 units, each of which is based on dialogues which exemplify and bring to life the new grammar introduced in that particular unit. Transliteration in the roman script is provided for the first five units and for all words in the Hindi-English glossary. The dialogues form a kind of soap opera based on the life of a Delhi family; the English translations are deliberately close and literal, so as to form a key to the Hindi. The grammatical explanations are intended to be as accessible and non-technical as possible. The main grammatical structures of Hindi are all presented. There are plenty of exercises for you to practise every new point and a key at the back so that you can check your answers. The book is accompanied by 2 cassettes (0 340 86688 8) or 2 CDs (0 340 91383 5) containing approximately 2 hours of listening material. The audio can be purchased on its own or as packs with the book (book/cassette pack: 0 340 86686 1; book/CD pack: 0 340 91382 7).